‘Button’ an epic-length film that fails viewers on the
journey
I waited to see the film
”
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
”
until it come out on DVD for one main reason
– the film clocks in at a nearly three-hour length – and in my
experience most movies that long don’t deserve it.
‘Button’ an epic-length film that fails viewers on the journey
I waited to see the film “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” until it come out on DVD for one main reason – the film clocks in at a nearly three-hour length – and in my experience most movies that long don’t deserve it.
When I first saw the preview last summer, I was intrigued if only by the weird concept of a baby born as an old man who gradually grows younger through the years. When I realized it paired up director David Fincher with Brad Pitt, the movie made my list of must-sees. Fincher and Pitt worked together at two other movies, the detective thriller “Se7en” and the reality-bending “Fight Club.” Both movies have twists and turns that are completely unexpected and kept viewers on the edges of their seats until the end.
Add into the mix a couple Oscar-winning actresses (Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton) and the movie seemed destined to be a critical success as well as a mainstream hit. Though it garnered 13 Oscar nominations, the movie took home just three having to do more with the miraculous feat of taking Pitt from age 80 to 0 in the role, and Blanchett from 7 to 90-plus. The movie won for art direction, makeup and visual effects.
Though I agree that all those things were stunning, if a bit unnerving to watch Pitt age in reverse, the epically long movie never felt much like a journey I wanted to take.
The premise of the story is based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and adapted by Eric Roth for the screen, about a baby that is born as an old man and expected not to live very long. With a mother who died in child birth, Benjamin is abandoned on the steps of an old folks home by his grieving father.
Queenie, the under-utilized Taraji P. Henson, takes the baby in and raises him as her own. The retirement home seems suitable to the growing Benjamin and he has all the same ailments as the people surrounding him, thin hair, weak limbs, a scratchy voice. He is isolated from other children except for the granddaughter of own of the residents Daisy (played by multiple actresses through the years and finally as Blanchett when she reaches adulthood.) The character of Benjamin, too, is shared among several actors who play him as an elderly child and again when he enters infancy. For the bulk of the movie, however, Pitt plays the role in heavy makeup.
The movie is slow moving, and I kept waiting for something to happen. First, Benjamin gets a job on a tugboat as a teen, and I thought, okay so now his real adventures will begin. But aside from an affair with a married woman in Russia and a very brief stint in World War II, nothing much happened. Then Benjamin returned home and met with Daisy, who by now is a woman growing into her own skin who is becoming a world-famous ballerina. But again, nothing really happened. By the time Daisy and Benjamin do end up together, more than two hours into the movie, I was ready for it to be over.
The movie also uses a plot device to move things forward that didn’t really work. The movie starts in a New Orleans hospital room with a dying Daisy and her daughter (Julia Ormond). From the scenes it seems as though mother and daughter have a somewhat strained relationships, and from the snatches of news reports and comments from nurses and aides, it appears to be the beginning of a storm that turned into Hurricane Katrina. Daisy wants her daughter to read out loud the diary of a man named Benjamin Button. And as Caroline (Ormond) reads, the story of Button is revealed. The backdrop of Hurricane Katrina is never explained in the movie and seems to have little to do with the plot, except perhaps as a time reference for viewers. After all, we know that Benjamin was born just as World War I ended and that Daisy is dying in 2005.
For an epic movie, it reveals very little about its characters, their motivation, and it left me wondering what I was supposed to get out of the movie in the end. There seemed to be no life lessons, except perhaps, that wisdom may not always come with age.
